


Tin Man

by Vellev



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Androids, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Other, References to Suicide, Self-Destruction, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-04 18:39:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vellev/pseuds/Vellev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brobot's inner journey to get a heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Empty Kettle

_When a man's an empty kettle,  
 He should be on his mettle,  
 And yet I'm torn apart . ___  
There are a number of things that alert you that it is the morning. Your internal clock and alarm, clicking to life and buzzing deep inside your right leg, programmed by your creator specifically for the reason to let you know that it is the normal time that humans are awake. Specifically, Jake English, for your creator had observed that he woke up at about eight every morning. Therefore, he had programmed you to leave sleep mode at about six thirty, so you can give Jake his violent wake-up call on a randomly chosen (using a complicated algorithm that defined "random" by doing a number of different changes to the millionth of a second your system switches on at) day. Therefore, your internal clock is important, even if just for a simple task such as switching on each morning.  
This is not all that causes you to awaken, though. There are other things. Just less... robotic reasons. Well, that was a contradictory statement. You are a robot, so there are very few reasons that are not robotic that could cause you to do anything. Yes, humans could be robotic, but robots could not be human. You were close to human, ever so close, but still your clanking and clicking body and intense perfection differed you from Jake English, or your master, for example. They were human. So very human. You are supposed to be human. That is your main goal in life (or whatever your existence may be classified as. You yourself are not entirely sure. You are not aware if your creator even knows). To be as human as possible. If someone wanted a human so badly, why not just make one? You know that human reproduction is quite simple. Why create your sorry questionable existence so it can struggle with its entire inhumanity?   
Still, the heat of the sun helps you awaken. Its rays, though damaging to human skin (even if it did put the most... interesting color on Jake English's skin) only warm your metal covering. It send your circuits into a false overdrive, as if your system had overheated. This had never occurred when you lived with your master. His house was cold, dark; you had barely made it out to see the wondrous sun previously. It was a trap of cold floors in the early mornings. It was a collection of swords and screens and lights that stayed off all day. It was a tornado of messy clothes not touched in years. His skin was cold, so pale your creator could have been a ghost. His heart didn't beat that fast, not noticeably. It pitter-pattered and tapped on, but wasn't a whelming beat. However, Jake English was warm.   
His island was warm, the sun beat down on it, the volcano in the centre of the island, even the cool water just produced airs of being warm. (You're just springing with contradictions today, aren't you?)  
His house was warm, the way that the heat of the island would warm the entire house, making its own unnecessary heater, the way that it made Jake English perspire (yet another human function you cannot perform.)  
Jake English was warm. Blood rushed through his veins, pounding with humanity and survival. His heart pushed blood, life, throughout his body. His smile was warm, soft, and true. So much unlike the awkward twitch of metal that clanked along your face as your creator formed what looked a little like his signature smirk. His heart was warm and consuming. Loving. He loved everything he did. He adventured, he ate, he swam, and he loved it. He loved you, in a way, too. He loved wrestling with you. He loved fighting with you. He loved the challenge you gave him. He loved the rush you could supply him with. He loved the spike of your hair, and the curve of your fingers. He loved your witty comments, and your smile. He loved your shades, no matter how often he said he was frustrated with them. That was good enough. He loved your creator. He chats with him every night. He stays up until scarily late hours studying the art that your creators makes. He kisses the screen when your creator speaks to him. You can sense the loving way that he types and the way his fingers flash over the keyboard with intense excitement as he speaks to your creator. You can recollect that one time when Jake English and your creator videochatted and showed each other different human parts of each other. Jake English loved your creator. He loved. You didn't know if you could love.   
Jake English helps you learn that you can love.   
As the sun rises, your random calculator alerts you that this is one of the mornings in which you will wrestle Jake English awake. You quite do like these mornings, for very specific reasons, also.  
You click your metal heels along rock and grass, ignoring the searing heat felt on the bottom of your feet as deathly hot sand gets stuck in the crevices between the metal. The world rushes past you as you run, flashstepping from one tree to another, until you arrive at Jake English's abode in record time. You catch him long before he would normally wake up, and boost yourself up to his window, unclicking the lock with a single flick of a metal cased digit. He only locks this window so you have the pleasure of unlocking it now, he knows you can find many ways to enter other than this, but he still leaves you the challenge of creeping in. He's gracious. You slip yourself inside of his room soundlessly, surveying the area. You had previously wished that little dials and levers would appear on your shades, like you were some spy in a movie, but, alas, they cannot. The human eye is very difficult to understand. Not even your creator could fathom how to build an exact replica. You cannot see. You can only sense every detail, and recognize what you “see”.   
You see Jake English, and you remember why you love doing this. He's hugging a pillow to his chest, pulling it close to him, his legs wrapping around it. He's wearing only his boxer shorts, with a forgotten blanket tangled about his feet. He's snoring loudly, his mouth wide open on his face that looks entirely calm. That's another amazing human thing, the way as they sleep all of their facial muscles can just... give, and all of a sudden, they completely slacken. It's beautiful... So imperfect...  
Until you know you must awaken him from this dangerously open slumber. He's not taking any precautions to protected himself. An easy target. It would be to easy to...  
You grab one of his ankles, tearing away some of the fabric of the blanket along with it, and pull it up to your full height. His body flips, and he begins to wake up, though you are already moving again, hovering up off the ground. You tug him along with you effortlessly, turning his entire body upside down. He awakens, though still drowsy, and begins to flail his arms around.  
You slip back out the window, carrying him with you by his ankle still, until you feel his arm yanking harshly at your thigh, pulling it forward. It pushes your jet pack off balance, making you topple over towards the ground. You let go of him, let him fall wherever he does, as long as it's not on top of you. With all of your sharp edges, he could get hurt.   
You land on one foot, and set the other one down easily, watching him land right on his ass, his body jumping at the impact.   
He lugs his body up, massaging his collarbone. He's hunched over, his eyes still reddened and sagging from sleep. His body is heavy, not fully awake at all. He looks as if he could fall over at any second and into a deep sleep.   
“Must we go through this every week?”  
You don't answer, just rush towards him, fisting your hand as you bring it to his shoulder level. He ducks to the side and down, so you miss, and makes a hit for your stomach, only to be blocked by your forearm. He takes this opportunity to jump on top of you, pushing your metal body into the grass. He puts a leg between yours as he puts one of his tanned hands on your higher arm, bracing it down to the ground.   
You use your other arms to flip the positioning over, getting him hard on the ground, and kicking his lower leg as you elbow his arm. He sends an arm up to send a punch in your direction, only for you to catch his punch mid-air, but he doesn't relent, following through and into your cupped hand. You push down on it with only a strength that matches his. He winces, and you test his strength until he he can push your arm away, punching your upper chest, only to shake his fist out in pain after it met the metal of your body.  
“Goddarnit, this is entirely unfair!”   
You grab your hands underneath each of his armpits and stand up, lifting him, and then push out with your jets and fly up, bringing him high into the sky. “Get over it.” Your mechanical voice rasps, clicky and shittily recorded by your creator.   
He struggles underneath your arms, flailing his body and flinging around, trying to get you to unhand him. He doesn't understand that if you were to let go of him, he would plummet to his untimely demise at the height you've pulled him up to. You can feel his blood beating beneath your fingertips, his body pulsing. He's so human, so perfect. Perfection by imperfection. He's just... everything. He's just so goddamn human it hurts. You want it. You want him. You want to be him. You need to... You...  
You need to keep holding onto him. You can't let him drop, as sweaty as his human body may be. You need to keep a tight hold on him, so he does not get hurt. You drop him into the ocean near enough to the shore that he can swim back, but not so he would hit the bottom uncomfortably. He lands in with a sploosh and you follow his swimming back with your eyes from the sky as he drags himself out of the water. He raises a single fist at you, and then collapses on a sandy dune, probably to sleep more.   
You give yourself a pat on the back, congratulate yourself on a job well done, and fly back to his house so maybe you can make a mess of the place before he gets back. 


	2. I Could Be a Human

_Just because I'm presumin'_  
 _That I could be a human_  
 _If I only had a heart._

You slip through the window of Jake English's house yet again, smashing a DVD beneath your feet as you land inside of his room. Oh, poor guy. You wonder if he liked this one. You bet he liked it, he did have an unusual attraction to about every movie he watched. It was difficult for you to sense those movies, the images moved to quickly for your sensors to detect them. If the movie was downloaded directly into your system, maybe it would be a possibility you could read it. Maybe. You had always wondered, but never thought it could be possible.  
You ponder placing one of these movies into your USB drive, and seeing what was on one. As your hard drive spins, thinking over the idea, you punch the orange gourd object beneath your arm, crushing its rhine, and causing the walls of the plant to collapse, it's sticky insides leaking out onto the ground. You take the differently colored guts of the plant, and mix your metal fingers around in it, wondering what the texture would feel like. The seeds fell between your fingers often, and the strings got caught on your fingers before you could cut them on the metal. You took a large lump of the gourd's insides out, and placed it on the wall on top of one of Jake English's movie posters, the “Tomb Raider” one. You spread it across this poster onto the one lying beside it, labeled “Indiana Jones”. The orange insides and juices ran down the poster, discoloring it slightly.  
You spread the rest of the insides of the gourd around his room, on top of posters, over DVD cases, on his telescope, and some on the bed. You run out of pumpkin before your job is done, and proceed to go out to get more. You return with another orange gourd, and smash it against his desk, leaving it in its decrepit state. You step back, admiring your work. Beautiful. You could really be an artist.  
Can robots be artists? Do you even have a calling? Fuck, you don't know. You know what?  
You bring your fingers to your mouth, and kiss them, then spring your hand away to motion to your work.  
Who the fuck cared if robots could be artists, you were damn good enough to be one.  
You wonder how long it will take Jake to come back. You did leave him pretty far away. Ha, he could handle himself. Maybe he was getting breakfast. Humans need to eat. Jake English does say that this orange gourd plant is not the best meal for every day. But still, he'll eat it. You wonder how it tastes. Hm. You've tried putting food in your system before, but it just overrides your circuits and is just generally gross. You can't taste it either. You've always wondered what good food tasted like, like things in five star restaurants, or....you can just imagine chinese takeout. Glorious chinese takeout. Or pizza. It's tomato-ey, and drippy, and cheesy, and it makes your stomach feel warm from the inside out, and melts down there, sending you into a state of joy. Yeah. You could so go for a pizza. You've imagined tasting about every edible thing you can find on the internet. A lot of it sounds really gross (because it's the internet).  
You find yourself searching through DVDs, and you find two that sound kind of cool. “Fight Club” and the “Wizard of Oz”. You'd heard your creator talk about one of them. Fight Club was an epic work of art. The Wizard of Oz had this kick ass horse that was like a billion different colors all at the same time. You took both of the discs downstairs with you, and kicked your feet up on a table as you sat down in one of the chairs. You insert the disc into a DVD/CD drive on the right side of your chest below your arm. You feel the DVD buzz around, and you sit back for the ride.... 

One hundred and thirty nine minutes later you are in undying love with Fight Club. You want to robot marry Fight Club. You and Fight Club could have beautiful kick ass mechanical children together. Robot on DVD sex. Hot.  
As you have now learned you can in fact watch movies, and the information is downloaded into you somehow, you get many ideas of what you can watch next.  
Yes. Your decision has been made.  
Jake English is a sixteen year old boy. He has to have it somewhere. Maybe hidden in some DVD. Maybe stowed away in some...  
You go back to his room, searching it. Behind his bed-stand you find it.  
God fucking damnit, Jake, all you want to do is find some good porn, but no, his entire fucking stash is filled with blue ladies. You are so fucking done.  
You are soon out of time to be done, though, because you can hear Jake English walking up the stairs. You throw his porn (ew, ew) back behind the bed-table, and try to look normal. Fuck, how does a robot look normal. No, no, how the fuck do you do this. Calm down, don't override your circuits. What are you even hiding from? You can sense him coming up the stairs, oh your fucking god, you, you, you, you.  
In a sudden bout of uncertainty, you stick your head in the orange gourd as Jake English enters his room. He admires (with a death stare) your artwork on his walls, and then turns his head to see your antics. Yes. You are the gourd. He will never notice you. You are the pumpkin, you are the pumpkin. Be the pumpkin, Brobot. Be the pumpkin. He'll never see you. Never even notice you, nah, you are just a part of the pumpkin.  
You find him slapping a button in on your ass (seriously, why did your creator put that there? It was stupid, and just...why.) and, aw shit, you find yourself blacking out, and your robotic body falls slack. 

When you come back to your senses, and you feel your hard drive whizzing to life, you feel that you cannot move your body. You must be in Level 2A sleep mode, where you can sense what is going on around you, but not make any conscious effort to change anything. It's always been an odd state. Designed what for? You didn't even know if your creator was aware. It was a backup state, possibly a fuck-up in your program that your creator never cared to fix because he's a lazy ass.  
Speaking of your creator, it seemed as if Jake English was conversing with him over their chatting system, pesterchum. Your sensors can see the orange and green flickering across the screen. You can see the happy, jumpy way Jake English is acting, as if the whole world is now better that he has this asshole talking to him.  
Why doesn't he look that happy when you talk to him? You could talk to him. You could pour all your secrets out to him. You'd tell him everything. You have secrets, you know. Stuff you don't tell Jake English. You were programmed with a little sass, and boy, do you use it.  
You wonder what you could do to make Jake act that way towards you. You've done a lot for him. When he got sick, once, you cared for him. When he got stuck in traps, you would always go save him, and patch him up. You've jacked him off a few times. You've done everything, goddamnit! Your precious, priceless metal, and masterly build parts, you expensive code, was towed off toward a practically deserted island for him. And you don't object to it one bit.  
You're your creator, but better. Much better. If robots could be better than humans? Are they? Well, you can fly.  
He can touch things.  
You can hack a system in a few seconds.  
He can taste food.  
You can beat anyone and anything in a fight.  
He has Jake English.  
You see the little video chat message flicker up on his computer, and your creators face flickers up. They smile, waving, and you hear Jake English speaking up.  
“Are you excited?!” He exclaims happily.  
“Of course I am. Jumping in my chair over here. I'm gonna pee or something. Send help.”  
“Oh, don't freak out over it, my good man! It's only a day of waiting more.”  
“And then I'll have you all to myself?”  
“Of course. There's no one else here.”  
And there isn't. There is only one person on this island, Jake English. There is no one else here. He is alone. He has no living, breathing shoulder to lean on. He understands this. He wouldn't even give you a second thought. He passes over the idea of your existence because you are not human. If you were. If only you were. Haha. Maybe, in your eternal lifetime, they will develop a way to make your mechanics entirely human. To produce blood that will beat through your circuits, to produce brain waves and second eyes, and lungs so you can take deep breaths in and out. All powered by a large, human heart, pumping life into your system.  
“Perfect.”  
“I can't wait until then, love! I'm just. I barely even know what to do with myself!”  
“I know, I know, I've packed my bag a million times over.”  
“Haha, you dork.”  
“You're the dork. I'm still afraid I've forgotten something.”  
“But you can't think of what it is? And it's on the tip of your tongue?”  
“And I don't care. All that matters is that you're there.”  
“Aw.”  
“Anyway, we could share a toothbrush if need be.”  
“That's repulsive.”  
They're repulsive. All this love, this overflowing human emotion, it's sickening. It makes your hard drive spin too fast and makes your insides feel as if they are the guts of a pumpkin, about to bleed throughout your system at any given time.  
Seeing them. Sensing them like this. It's disgusting. Your metal is both about to freeze and melt at any moment. Anything and nothing could set you off.  
You want Jake. You need him. You need his humanity, you need your goal, you want it. You can't focus on anything else. The name whizzing through your wires.  
Jake Jake Jake Jake Jake Jake Jake English.  
You want him so badly, you don't know what to do with yourself when you see him lean forward and kiss the computer screen. 


	3. Regarding Love And Art

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe some slight sexual content in this one

_I'd be tender, I'd be gentle  
And awful sentimental  
Regarding love and art _

The day begins to come to a close with Jake messing around on his computer on the internet, and you in Sleep Mode. You watch him click the mouse and press the screen, he looks too happy. You're surprised he isn't out adventuring, just to calm his nerves. He's so excited for the arrival of your creator. You can sense the tension in the air, he's not able to sit still, yet he won't leave his house. He's probably remaining there just in case your creator somehow gets an early flight, even though that is entirely impossible.  
Jake believes in the impossible like that. Although entirely irrational, he can believe anything. It's amazing. He's so happy, so non-caring, so hopeful. He lives his life in complete bliss. It's beautiful.   
You don't know if you believe in the impossible. You often think of impossible things, but understand how impossible they are, and back down. Like the Jake English situation. It's difficult to deal with. Your programming specifically mentions that when something is irrational, it should not be preformed for everyone's safety.   
Oh, but you've learned since you've been programmed. You are supposed to learn. To learn to be human. You've stayed hopeful of the impossible. You are still hopeful about the Jake English situation.  
You feel a hand on your metal ass again, turning you on.   
No. Not like that. Waking you up from your slumber. That's better.  
Jake English waits for your system to boot up, then takes your metal hand in his. You look at him quizzically (or as much so as your facial wires allow). He brings you over, as he sits back down on his computer chair, and snaps your legs to a kneeling position in front of him. He unbuckles his belt.  
Oh.  
You take care of taking the belt off of him, and unbutton his shorts. You slide his zipper down, the zipping sound seeming painstakingly loud. You look up at Jake, who looks down at you expectantly.   
You trace your metal fingers around his erection still in his boxer briefs. It was so human. So manly. You wish you had one.   
You dip you hand beneath the tight band of the briefs, uncovering the human flesh. He gasps slightly at the temperature of your metal, though you couldn't tell if it was too hot or too cold.  
You could feel his heat in your hands as you swirl a finger around the head of his cock, looking at him for a reaction. He gave one, a small sound escaping his throat.   
He was so warm, so human. His cock began to harden even in your hands, and truly, it was awesome. You'd never get bored of this. You bring two fingers up and down its full length, then wrap multiple fingers around it, softly and lightly pumping it to more hardness.   
He let a louder sound erupt, only edging you on more to try harder, precisely time each movement of your hand to how you had learned he liked it. And he did like it.  
You could see how much he liked it, the way he would toss his head back and let out sounds. He way his body would shudder and he would look away, to somewhere else in the room, as you would rub a finger over him, spreading out the precome.  
Oh, god, he was beautiful. So fucking human, oh god. He would build himself up into a sweat, and his body would shake with your movement, squirming. He would moan openly, not afraid to let you hear his natural, flowing voice. It wasn't automated, like yours. You sounded like a fucking GPS system, he sounded the most human he could be. You told him this, once, how he sounded like a human. He offered that it's more normal to describe it as an angel's voice, as that was what your creator said. But no. Human was much better than some mythical beast. A thousand times better. You'd have Jake English over any angel.  
His voice was so much louder than usual, so messy and frantic. He was no longer keeping his composure, but rather let his hands fall onto your metallic shoulders for a lack of a better place to put them.   
You could feel his heartbeat, so loud, so strong, under your hands. It was screaming, raging, untimed, irregular. It beat without a beat, but that was okay, it didn't need to be exact, it wasn't supposed to be exact. It wasn't randomly timed by a Random gen = new Random(); but rather not timed at all. It was random. Entirely random. Just...it was hard to understand, that something random could exist. Without math, or rationality, just...random. It was stunning. Jake English was stunning.   
God, you wanted more than anything to feel that pleasure. The look on his face, his happiness, oh god, oh god, oh god, he looked so happy, so beautiful, it was amazing. Perfect. You know he could never return a favor like this to you, although. It was unfortunate, but true. You plan on one of these days, maybe you could stretch him out. He could get pleasure from that, possibly.  
He did enjoy it. Even though he couldn't do anything in return to you. He enjoyed it. Even though your movements were exact, perfect, timed. He enjoyed it. You didn't only cause him pain. You didn't only fight with him. You could cause him this much pleasure. You, you with your metallic limbs, lack of any sexual parts, your circuits, your inhumanity. You with your nothing, lack of a proper name, lack of blood, lack of a heart, and you still could cause him this much pleasure.  
It made your hard drive whirl so fast you thought it would break. It made the circuits in your hand flicker on and off, sending so many signals, you didn't know what to do. You think something in your back might be emitting some gas, smoking.   
It was you, it was all you. It was you that did this to Jake. You had the power to.   
You taught Jake how to fight, you take care of Jake, make sure he eats and sleeps every day. You make sure everything about him is okay. You make sure he's not depressive or anything.  
He relies on you. He couldn't do this without you.  
He cares about you, oh my god, maybe he cares about you as much as you care about him.   
It's you. This is you. You are the one that's sending him over the edge like this, you're the only one that's ever touched him like this.   
You bring him to release, and he cries out into the empty house, “Dirk!” As he falls limp.  
You think you feel something in you break, but you don't think you can fix it. You can't think. It's not working.   
He leans down, smiling, the hazy, sleepy, look in his eyes. He presses a kiss to the now warm metal forehead of yours. “Dirk, Dirk, Dirk.” He says your creator's name every time that he lands a kiss over some other part of your face. He brings his arms around you, hugging your metal body towards him. Just, it's not you. He's not hugging you. It's someone else.  
He kisses all over your face, and down your neck. You can't move. Your circuits and joints won't listen to you. They aren't responding. You can't think. There is no information being processed, just a long, high pitched beep.   
He finally puts his lips against your “mouth”, and Jake English is kissing you.  
And you cannot kiss back.  
There is a small possibility your facial structure would allow some kind of ability to have a sloppy kiss, though without any tongue (because you do not have one). And you would. So quickly. You would kiss him at any moment, take his mouth, make it yours, memorize it so you could kiss it just the way he liked, discover things about kissing him him, hold him close. But you cannot.  
Then there is also the fact that you cannot move. It's not you. It's Dirk. Dirk is the one in front of Jake right now. That'w what he sees. That's what Jake is imagining as he licks your warm metal lips up and down even though you cannot reciprocate. You didn't know someone could entertain themselves with a partner that does nothing for so long, but Jake managed to do it.  
Because Jake English loves Dirk Strider. He'd do anything for him. He would kiss him heartless, metal robot for your creator.   
Jake English pulls away from the kiss, smiling hugely. God, we was so fucking cute. In the manliest way. The most seme shota ever.   
No, stay on track here. Jake pushes you aside, and your metal clucks to a pile of joints on the ground. You are pretty sure something in your system is totally fucked up.   
He takes his shorts off, and replaces them with a pair of pajama bottoms. You still have come on your chest, but he's entirely forgotten about it.  
Even from the odd, sideways-upside down angle you can sense the world from, you see him sit in his computer chair, and his fingers flicker over the keyboard, and a colorful image comes on screen.  
You can't sense it correctly, too far away, and your senses are down. But then the audio comes it.  
At first, you think he's watching porn, and you question how many times Jake English can go in a day. Until you see his finger comes up to his mouth as he bites his fingernail (a somewhat nervous habit of his, though he also preforms it when in deep thought). And then you recognize it, and you make out the picture, and you see what he's watching, and you don't know what to think, so it's good you can't.  
You're pretty sure that's a badly taken video of you and him from a few minutes ago. Oh, fuck. He taped that? Why? And why with his computer? You have a perfectly good camera on you that's much better than that. Ugh.  
As the video comes to a close, and you begin to have that odd looming sense of...something in your system, just you can't tell what, he opens another window. In this one, you see a familiar face come onto the screen.   
“Hey, man.”  
“Dirk, I just made the video!”  
“Oh, that's why you look so hot...then again, when don't you?”  
“Pfft. Always the prince in shining armor, are you?”  
No, that would be you.  
“Anything to serve my princess. Send it whenever.”  
“Alright, I'll send it now! Also, if I were a princess, I wouldn't need rescuing. I could get myself out of any awesome dragon's nest so easily. You'd be the one captured.”  
“Whatever you think....Oh, wow, did you use your computer camera for this?”  
“...Yes?”  
“It's so bad, like, so pixellated. You know Brobot has a really well made camera built in?”  
Jake gives precisely .4378 seconds to steal a look at you when you're mentioned, then goes back to his boyfriend. “Cool.”  
“Don't really, this is awesome. God, you're so fucking sexy.”  
“Soon enough I'll have these hand all over you.”  
“Don't spur my imagination on, I'll never make it until then.”  
“I would, though, Dirk. I don't think you really know just how much I want you, dude!”  
“I think I know....Can I call you back in a little while? Jake, you're so hot, fuck.”  
“Do it for me honey.”  
“Here?”  
“Righty-o!”  
And you spot paying attention, because you don't want to see your creator sticking fingers in his butt over the video of you jacking his boyfriend off.  
It's disgusting. He's disgusting.  
Jake was supposed to be yours. You were supposed to win his heart over here, on this island. But you can't. Because your creator already has his heart, and he's being a greedy fuck and keeping it all to himself (not saying you wouldn't, also).   
You hate him. You hate the person that created you. You hate him, god fucking damn it.  
He programmed you to want the things that you want, and then he steals them all from you.   
He's like some kind of sadist, he created you to take things away from you. His goal is practically torturing you. Seeing how far he can go before you break. Seeing what your limit is, pushing you past it, and then maybe making a better you. Maybe a more unbreakable, robotic you.  
He is sending you in the entire other direction. You want to be human. He wants you to be flawless.   
Humans have flaws. That's what makes them human. Sure, they can act like they don't have flaws, but needing to do that means you have flaws in the first place. You want flaws. You really want a flaw.   
But you have so many. You have no blood, no heart, no love. A loveless creature.  
Why can't he let you be human instead of perfect!   
Because he knows you could get Jake if you were.  
Or maybe if you were human you would be Dirk. Maybe you are your creator.   
You feel your mind shut off and go into sleep mode.


	4. The Boy Who Shoots The Arrows

I'd be friends with the sparrows   
And the boy that shoots the arrows  
If I only had a heart 

Jake makes you leave because “Everything needs to be perfect! Dirk'll be here!” and he didn't have time to entertain the likes of you at the given moment. So he sends you off into the island, to entertain yourselves as they probably fuck like rabbits.  
Dirk's plane hasn't arrived just yet, so they're probably not going at it, but give them time, they'll jump each other as soon as they get the chance.   
You know a lot about the island. As much as Jake knows, since he taught you about it, and more. You know what plants are edible, and which will make a person sick (though this information is not useful to you, it is useful to others). You know each of the ruins, and which ones are safe enough to let Jake go adventuring in. You know all the spots of the island, and, most importantly, the beasts that live there.  
Admittedly, you know ever species and every genus of animal that inhabits this island, and you have related with a majority of them, on a regular basis also. The tinkerbulls. Those fucking things. They currently surrounded you, fluttering around your face as you lay in a small grassy space. One of them nuzzles up to your fingers, while the other entertained themselves by prodding your arms and face. One nibbled on your toe. You bring a hand up to touch the tip of one of their snouts, and they make the most adorable yelping sound, and then it rubs its head right between its horns up against your palm, and you think you're about to melt right there.  
The tinkerbulls. They were so cute, you didn't know what to do. It was crazy. You could spend entire days just cuddling with them. And they loved you, oh, wow, did they love you. Jake was mean to them, but he couldn't hear them. They let out these fucking adorable moos at everything, but it was so high pitched, the human couldn't hear it. But you understood what they meant most of the time, they were simple creatures.   
You used your metal finger to touch between its horns, making it yelp a little, and you could just fucking melt, like what they hell how could anything be this cute.  
Then the one that's entertained yourself with biting on the metal of your toe makes a louder, higher moo and they all burst away from you, flying away like a cloud of dust. The one near your hand takes a bit longer to leave, but disperses with the rest of them. You tilt your head up to see what's scared them off, so be greeted by the great horse-like creature in front of you.   
The centaur creature approaches you fearlessly, a good head or two taller than you when standing straight. It doesn't lean down to see into your eyes, as a majority of the creatures had when you first arrived on the island. Rather, it glares down at you over the edge of its nose, somewhat angrily, yet you know its just asserting it's power.  
The centaurs have always alarmed you, though interested you deeply. They did not speak to you, not mutter a word, yet you had seen them speaking in hushed tones to their comrades. They were creatures of war, majestic battle victors. They didn't trust humans, shot Jake English down whenever he got too close to them. At first, this sent something off in them against you. You looked enough like a human, no horse lower half, but they agreed to existing with you.   
The original ceremony welcoming you into their pack was humorous to say the least. It involved lots of muscle touching, drinking, and laughing, to not go any further into it. Enjoyable, though. Laughing with something else, even though they wouldn't speak to you. It was a new form of communication, a new way of doing things. A way you could bond with something else, something not human, and not even have Jake English on your mind at all. He didn't exist among the centaurs, he wasn't a huge part of their lives. So be it, then.   
The centaur in front of you gives a gruff smile, lowering his bow and untensing the arrow wrapped in it. The rest follow suit, a younger male getting into some confusion with the arrow, and it flying somewhere close to another's hooves.   
You approach him, and he looks around at the other centaurs, afraid. They part ways for him, and for a second he gives a look of absolute terror, of being left, of being given away. Apparently, as you learned on the internet, it was a common fear for smaller children, that they would be left by their parents, forever.   
A greater fear than death, perhaps. To know someone you love so dearly, someone who you lay all your trust, you entire wellbeing on, to desert you by your own choice.   
You don't think you've ever felt it. Being left, not wanted. Well, that was a lie, you suppose, you were always 'not wanted'. But you had a purpose, and you carried out that purpose, as little thanks you got. A thankless job, but someone's got to do it. Hm. That was untrue, also. You got thanks, just the person wasn't aware they were thanking you. Jake English's mere existence was thanks enough. Every smile, every laugh. Every time he did anything about you, glanced at you. Anything he did that involved you made your chest ache and your mind spin.   
You kneel down, and extract the arrow from where it had lodged itself in the grass. He flinched, looking at an older centaur and reaching his arms out, but they inched away. You saw his eyes begin to get glassy, watering slightly. You reached the arrow out, and he froze entirely, his body entirely still except for the lone tear falling down the curve of his cheek.  
You offered him the arrow again. “Take it.” Your mechanical voice rings. “It's yours, isn't it?”  
He nods, and looks back to his pack as he edges toward you, his hooves shifting and pattering nervously. He reaches his arm, taking the arrow from you, and brings it close to him body quickly.   
“You need it to defend yourself.” You warn him, and he looks at the arrow, somewhat guiltily, though you didn't understand why.  
“Shh, shh, I'm not going to hurt you.” You say, and offer you arm to him again.   
He shifts his torso around, placing the arrow back in the quiver fashion around his horse-like back. He then looks at you quizzically, and places his hand in yours.  
You shake it, and the centaurs around you smiled. You had taught them this, the human way of greeting and peace-making. It was foreign and exotic to them, which somehow made them like it more. They developed something of an obsession with hand-shaking (they had a lot of obsessions), and would demand that you shake their hand any given moment, sweat coating their bodies when you did. It was slightly disgusting, but that was from a “human” perspective. Maybe their sweat was something like a compliment? You couldn't tell.   
The small centaur shook your hand, confused, and then a stunning smile broke across his face, teeth all broken and changed. But it was a smile of pure joy.   
He took your hand in his, placing it on his chest, smiling. You went along with the somewhat ceremony muscle massaging, actually favoring the feeling of a thumping horse heart in his chest. A young heart, beating so fast with so much hope.   
Then he placed his hand on your chest, and seemed surprised at the metal (and therefore lack of muscle) but continued with the ceremony, giggling by the end.   
Another of the centaurs put a hand on your shoulder after meeting the youngest one ended. You rose to your feet again, taking the object that he passed to you. A small rock, glimmering when the sunlight hit it. The most interesting color of green, even you couldn't define it even with all the Hex you knew. Reminded you of Jake's eyes a little. It hung on a leather string, and it was passed to a centaur behind you as he looped it around your neck, making it a necklace. It hung light against your chest.   
You pet the centaur that gave it to you, who stamped his feet joyously, and the pack began to move along to their normal grazing ground.   
The younger centaur stayed behind, gripping your torso with his hands. You looked down on him, and the pack waved their hands, pulling him back. He neighed helplessly, and stayed attached to your leg. You sense the older centaurs laughing, and one looks at you very seriously, transferring a message. You didn't know what he was saying exactly, but you got the general message. Don't fuck up.   
The centaur herd continued traveling away, the little one still latched onto you. You offered him a hand, and he smiled, then turned around, showing you his back. Offering for you to ride him? Oh, no, you'd break the poor dude.   
You turn the jets on your feet on, rising off the ground. He looks at you, alarmed, and then his facial expression turns to one of curiousness. He leans down, inspecting the jets, tries to touch it, and whips his finger away at the heat.   
He looks up at you, smiling again, as he sucks on the wounded appendage. You fly along side him, across the island, showing him things along the way. The waterfall (which he demands you swim through) the forests, and a few ruins. He goes up to each attraction, poking it and searching it with his eyes, giggling when he came to some sort of conclusion about whatever he found.   
You race him, flying through the island at high speeds as he gallops after you, happily. Like a puppy or something, just overjoyed to get all that energy out. Ugh. Being the centaur's babysitter was hard work.   
He takes out an arrow, and you look around for a life form he's planning to shoot. Rather, he takes a small rock out of the quiver also, and draws a series of circles on a tree. The then proceeds to shoot the arrows at the target, never getting any further than the outmost layer. Often, he barely even hits the tree. At first he laughed when he messed up, but then would get this determined look on his face, and keep shooting.   
Oh. You got it. He was trying to impress you. Some cool older guy, a friend of his parents and pack. Strong, able to fly, you were pretty damn awesome, you didn't blame him.   
He looked sad as he arrows began to run out and none had hit any of the inner circles of the target. He offers the bow and an arrow to you, looking sad.   
You take it, and try to line it up. Trajectory...okay, the velocity of the hit would make it just like so...oh, gotta pay attention to the wind. Blowing slightly southwest, hm, what's the speed....  
The arrow flies straight into the dirt right below the tree. You can hear the little centaur giggling. Bastard.   
You try again.  
No luck.  
Fuck, this was hard.  
Oh, now he was just straight out laughing at you! A loud neighing laugh, he held his stomach, crying his eyes out. Go on, laugh. God, if you'd had practice you could be good. Definitely. Little shit.  
The sun begins to set, and you see him yawn hugely as the arrows run out entirely. You both work to pull them from the tree trunk and the ground without damaging the arrow tips, so they could be used again, exchanging looks and laughs the entire time.  
You bring him back to the field, where, sure enough the centaur pack is waiting with open arms. He hugs you tightly, smiling, and runs over to his family. He waves you goodbye as you part ways, you mirroring him.  
You decide to walk back to Jake English's house along the beach, watching the sun fall. You were always a bit angry at you sensors during sunset. You'd heard miraculous descriptions of how sunsets looked, but something about the changing colors and brightness made it all too pixelated for you to understand. You sighed, and then saw something huge obscuring your sight from the tall pillar's of Jake's abode. You wondered what it was...You begin running toward there, hoping it wasn't something that was hurting Jake. You were the only thing allow to hurt him, nothing else. He was yours to wound, yours to protect, nothing could come to this island and take him away fr--  
That was what you thought until you saw a large plane landed on the sandy beach, an all too familiar human with spiky hair getting out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im still not happy with this but after two rewrites i just want to get to the rest of the story


	5. Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> read over by saint-joy, come here, baby, let me kiss your face. thank you!

Picture me a balcony  
Above a voice sings low:  
Wherefore art thou, Romeo? 

The sunlight world collapses around you breaking and shattering as you awaken. You are alerted that this is one of those fateful mornings where you must wake Jake up with a fight. You glide towards his abode, and see the tracks of a plane in the sand, dusty and unnatural. Who are you to say anything is unnatural, though?  
You know you shouldn't approach the house. Your creator is in there, somewhere, joyously laughing with Jake English. He is everything to your world, but he is not everything to you. Yet, you shouldn't get involved with their business, there is no need for you in that house. Jake English has your creator now. You are now just a lifeless hunk of metal, junk, ready to be thrown out when the next garbage disposal plane flies near. Maybe you should sit in the ruins and let yourself rust away, become a futuristic part of an ancient civilization.  
But you cannot. It is programed in your cords that on these randomized days, you must awaken Jake English. Your jets pull you toward the house, your body flying there, while your mind tries its hardest to stay somewhere, anywhere else on the island.   
You creep through Jake's window, shutting your eyes. You didn't want to see Jake's sleeping body, lovesick with your disgusting creator. You didn't want to see how peaceful he looked, protected by the “love of his life”. But you wanted to see him.   
You wanted to see Jake's black hair, ruffled messily with sleep around his face. You wanted to see his body wrapped around a pillow, his skin contrasting with the white and green. You wanted to see how the sun would hit his body, making his hair gleam and his skin seem to glow almost. You wanted to see how he sweat just slightly, how it made his toned body glisten.   
You could hear him snore a bit, his voice as beautiful and natural as ever. He did nothing to hide anything, he just presented himself to the world as he was, and the world loved him more than anything. You loved him move than anything...Haha, no that was foolish, you couldn't “love”. You were a goddamn robot. Getting ahead of yourself, there.   
And then you hear the breath of something else, higher intakes, smaller lungs probably. Your eyes snap open, was Jake English okay? Had some animal gotten in here and hurt him?  
You realize your own stupidity as your eyes set on the other body hidden within the sheets. Your creator has his body snuggled into Jake's like some kind of freakish parasite, and Jake has a loving arm wrapped around your creator's bare chest. You didn't even want to think what other parts of him were bare. It was disgusting. Despicable... caring.  
If you ignored the obvious, the fact that you were a mechanical fuckup, you could almost see yourself in Dirk's place. Your hair curved the same way. You had the same proportions, the same crazy long legs. Even your facial constructions were similar, stunningly so. The way Jake wrapped your creator into his chest, so protectively, so joyously. You would do anything to be Dirk Strider right now. Anything. You'd throw you life—or lack thereof—away. You would throw anyone else's life away. You would kill, borrow, steal, cut, wound, injure, puncture, rape and suffocate.   
To be in that warmth, to be protected, to be loved by Jake English. It made your chest ache, your body shiver, and your circuits hang dead and flat beneath your metal skin.   
Of course, you were different from Dirk. You were a copy of him, a damn bad one, too. A shitty clone, broken and forgotten.  
Voices, you realized they were your own (no, nothing is your own, everything is Dirk's), screamed in your mind, he's replaced you you cant be fixed you're broken you're a fucking shattered piece of machinery  
(you should be on the next garbage shipment off the island they would burn you up fire fire melting metal your circuits running dry batteries exploding in the heat)  
The heat of Jake English. He was so happy, all enveloping, all joyous. He would smile, and you swear the air around you got a little warmer (but you can't swear, you're a robot, there's nothing to swear on). He could light up your entire (mistake) life by just giving you his time of day, any time of day (humans died, he didn't have that much time in the first place. You'll never die, ever, ever.)  
(Maybe some day Jake English will die, and you'll be left alone to wander this uninhabited island, watching over the animals and crying at Jake's tombstone every day.) (No, you can't cry you're a fucking robot, you can't even cry over your own love's grave.)  
Jake English is not your love.  
You cannot love. You don't know what love is. Is it a kind of fruit? Maybe it's a last name. It's a state you're sent into when caring for someone. A feeling that had a billion different words. A feeling individual to each pair (or more in some relationships). Was love worth it? Was being in “love” with Jake English worth this. Worth this ever lasting laughter at your own pitiful life (haha, you're not even alive.)  
Here. Thank God (like there was one) for the dictionary. Love: noun; an intense feeling of deep affection.  
Oh, you had it bad for Jake.   
No. You couldn't. You're a robot, what is affection, can you measure how much intense is? You're a robot, you dream of electric sheep, you can't love anything. You'll break it. You're intelligence will shatter it, your strength will intimidate it until it   
slowly  
breaks  
away.  
Fuck, no, you were getting ahead of yourself, you need to wake Jake up, it's in your program, go, shake him away, fight him, win the fight, and leave, leave, get away, get far far away from Jake English, what he's doing to your head, your heart isn't right.  
Your heart? Nah, you didn't have one of those. Wow, you really were getting ahead of yourself.  
Take deep breathes (with the lungs you didn't have) close your eyes (didn't have those either) calm down your nerves (connecting to what brain?) and shut up the goddamn voices in your head.  
You can feel your body shaking, the orders and the will not lining up, you needed to learn the consequences before you learned not to do something, it was in your code.  
Your code. You look down towards your creator. Fuck your code. You hated your code. You hated Dirk Strider with a burning passion. There. Adam hates his God.   
You still need to wake him up! Ignore the smoke sizzling from your chest and that beeping sound, oh where was that beeping sound coming from? Ignore it, wake Jake English up, wake him up! You've done it countless times before! Wake him...  
(Why are you Brobot?)  
You hate that name.  
(Why aren't you Dirk?)  
You hate that man.  
You want to wound that man, you want to trample him into the ground and watch his (disgusting) red blood poor out of his open chest, ribs and lungs falling crunched and ripped. You want to tear his heart out and make him eat it raw, shove it down his goddamn throat. You wanted to watch tears fall down his face, leaking from him. You wanted to watch as he stopped breathing, stopped moving, stopped thinking you wanted to watch him stop. Stop everything. Stop everything he ever was, everything he ever will be. You wanted to stop yourself, stop your electric waves, stop your “thoughts” stop everything, oh, god, and my creator, please, please, make it stop, oh creator please--  
“Would someone please stop that infernal beeping noise!”   
You recognize Dirk's voice, but you do not see him. You don't see much, actually....You don't see anything. The same voice rings from above you.  
“...Is that the robot I made you?”  
“Yes, I suppose he got in here through the window.”  
“Wow, he's in really shitty shape.”  
“I hadn't noticed.”  
“D'ya want me to fix him up?”  
“Nah, I have you in my arms now.”   
And you hear a creaking of the mattress and wet noises, and you don't want to hear anymore. You don't want to see anymore.  
Jake English doesn't want you anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to combine this chapter and the next one, but decided it wasn't necessary. I feel like these are just getting shorter and shorter as I write. Thanks for all the comments, guys, they make me so fucking happy you wouldn't believe.


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